So far as I can tell, Green Skin has just been selecting the contest themes himself as of late. I started doing the polling thing when I was responsible for the contests because a Figure Realm member requested that methodology, and it seemed like a good idea to me; up until then, I had been just selecting them myself as well (of course, I was taking member's suggestions for themes into account while I was doing so, as does Green Skin).

Just wondering if there has ever been any mention of an Arkham themed contest? Basically, any figure from the Arkham series of video games, or characters being "arkham-ized", that haven't actually appeared in the games.

There has been a couple of Batman-themed "Gotham City" contests, but not one focusing on the Batman Arkham video game aesthetic in particular. That's a good idea for a contest theme, but, rather than limiting things to those specific titles, I think it might be better to have a challenge that encompassed all comic book-based video games, as that would provide a much wider range of characters for participants to choose from (X-men, Death & Return of Super-man, Spider-man, The Tick, WildC.A.T.s, Spawn, etc.) That way, if a given customizer doesn't have much interest in Batman and his associated Family/Rogues Gallery, they could still potentially find another comic book video game character that they may want to make a custom of (or maybe a person does like Batman, but they'd rather make something from an older 8/16/32-bit Batman game instead of the newer Arkham ones).

I'm afraid that wasn't quite what I was trying to say. I meant a more generalized contest encompassing all video games based on comic book properties, not any character done in the graphical style of the Batman: Arkham trilogy. If you want to do a contest focused on the Arkham games, I don't have a problem with that, I just reasoned that there'd probably be more participants/interest if the concept was expanded to be about comic book video games in the broader sense.

In a similar manner, I'd feel that it would be better to have a general video game RPG contest instead of making one that focused solely on Square-Enix's Final Fantasy franchise, again, purely because that would give participants a lot more subject matter and characters to work with.

And, as HeartBreakKid said, a contest focusing on Batman's Rogues Gallery, irrespective of the media they originated in, would also be cool. I was thinking of doing a contest along the same lines a while ago, except with Spider-man's Deadliest Foes instead. The only problem with that, as far as writing the rules go, is how do you decide on a cut off point for who is, or isn't, one of their foes when they've crossed paths with almost every villain in their respective comic book universes over the years? The rule I was gravitating towards was that the hero would have to have fought the villain on at least three separate occasions, but I'm not sure if even that would be adequate, because that could potentially exclude relatively new or under-used villains who are intended to be exclusive enemies of that particular superhero.

I think that one would be cool, and giving it a broader scope, rather than just focusing on comic book covers, should garner more interest/participation. That type of contest has also been suggested in the past (I think I called it "Art Alive" or something in one of the contest polls that I ran back in the day, but, it never got enough votes).

I always thought that McFarlane's Spawn comic book cover series of figures were neat-o, even though they were more statue than action figure.